Tuesday, August 12th Our first full day in Paris turned out to be our busiest. We had arranged to turn in the van between 10:00 and 12:00, which pushed the sightseeing part of our day into the afternoon. To complicate matters, the van drop off point was in Courbevoie, a northwest suburb of Paris. Specifically, the Peugeuot/Europe by Car headquarters, where we returned our trusty ride, is located in an industrial district far from Paris’ most popular landmarks. The good news was that we found the place with relatively little problem. Better still, the friendly Europe [View Full Entry]

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Monday, August 11th For one of the few times in our nine-week vacation, we set the alarm this morning. The cause was a worthy one: getting an early start on the journey to Paris. After a light breakfast at La Platriere, we were on the road by 9:00. The car trip to Paris took only 3 ½ hours, barely a drive to the corner grocery store by comparison to the eleven-hour marathon from Nice to Auvergne. The day started overcast and cloudy, but as if to match our mood, the clouds broke and sunshine prevailed by the time we reached the [View Full Entry]

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Sunday, August 10th Bugs, flatlands, and isolation. These were our first impressions of the countryside of Auvergne. We had initially planned to stay three nights at La Platriere, but after waking up on Sunday morning and taking stock of our surroundings, we resolved to press onward to Paris a day early, that is, Monday morning. A call to our Paris hotel ensured that we were cleared for an early arrival. After that, it was just a question of what to do in Auvergne for our one day in the region. As it turned out, all of our earlier impressions of Auvergne [View Full Entry]

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Sunday, August 9th This blog is short and sweet but our day was neverending. We said our goodbyes to Jacque at Eze and by 10:30 we hit the road to Auvergne. We knew that the trip from Eze to Auvergne was going to be the long drive of our European vacation but little did we know how long. The mileage was calculated to be about 750 kilometers so we knew that it was going to be at least 6-7 hours. Ha, it was more like 11 hours. The traffic again was horrible and we later realized the GPS took us the [View Full Entry]

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Friday, August 8th We drove to the village of La Turbie that was only three kilometers north of Eze. Here we saw Le Trophee des Alpes. The original Trophee was an enormous 164 foot 6th century Roman monument in which the statue of Caesar Augustus stood on top. This monument marked the division between Italy and Gaul. From the top of the Trophee we could see the city of Monte-Carlo 1,575 feet below. After admiring the great view from our house in Eze for the past week we made sure to visit the medieval village. We walked through the small village [View Full Entry]

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Thursday, August 7th We had such a good time at the beach we went back to Nice for another relaxing day. Becky and Curt went to the internet cafe to catch us up on blogging while Susan took the kids back to the same beach but this time we came prepared with umbrellas and mats for our towels since this beach was very rocky. This was a particular memorable day because we all went parasailing! What an absolute, exhilarating blast! Joe and Susan rode up together, Becky and Maylin were partners and Grace and Curt were the final team. After leaving [View Full Entry]

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Wednesday, August 6th Today was a busy day. Curt had done some research in our Provence guide book on some of the sights in the interior of Provence, away from the coast. He set an ambitious agenda that included trips to an underground grotto, a parfumerie, a mountaintop village, and a deep mountain canyon. For our first stop, we set the GPS to find the underground grottos outside the village of St. Cezaire-sur-Siagne. In truth, it wasn't the GPS's fault, but the grotto it found was not the one from our guide book. Worse, the grotto was closed for business. Only [View Full Entry]

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Tuesday, August 5th The Cote d'Azur is actually a string of small towns up and down the Mediterranean coast, stretching from San Remo on the Italian side past Saint Tropez in France, southwest of Nice. Of all these resort towns, perhaps Cannes is the best known. With that in mind, we picked Cannes for a day trip down the coast from Eze, as much hoping to immerse ourselves in a living production of "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" as to check out other beaching opportunities. The drive to Cannes from Nice took a little over an hour. From the outskirts [View Full Entry]

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Monday, August 4th Monaco, that well-known playground of the rich and famous, lies just down the hill to the north of our house in Eze. We all dressed in our finest and caught the northbound bus to the city for a gourmet lunch at a restaurant called Zebra, on the waterfront in Monaco overlooking the harbor. We dined on delicasies such as salmon, steak salad, and penne with a homemade tomato sauce. The restaurant wasn't that crowded, probably a good thing since everyone but us seemed to be smoking (including a few cigar smokers, ick!). On our way out of the [View Full Entry]

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Sunday, August 3rd In our new location in Eze, we are literally minutes from either Monaco or Nice. Take the road off the mountain northbound for 15 minutes and you're in Monaco. Southbound for 20 minutes and you're in Nice. We flipped a coin and decided to take the southern route today for our first foray into the heart of the Cote d'Azur. Our destination was one of the free public beaches that run the full length of Nice's harbor. While some of the private beaches are more sandy, by and large the public beaches are rocky. On the plus side, [View Full Entry]

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